"No," said the guide. "It is a pasturage. We are too high yet for a village."
On asking for a further explanation, Rollo learned that the mountaineers were accustomed to drive their herds up the mountains in the summer to places too cold to be inhabited all the year round, and to live there with them in these little huts during the two or three months while the grass was green. The men would bring up their milking pails, their pans, their churns, their cheese presses, and their kettles for cooking, and thus live in a sort of encampment while the grass lasted, and make butter and cheese to carry down the mountain with them when they returned.
At one time Rollo saw at the door of one of the huts a man with what seemed to be a long pole in his hand. It was bent at the lower end. The man came out of a hut, and, putting the bent end of the pole to the ground, he brought the other up near to his mouth, and seemed to be waiting for the travellers to come down to him.
"What is he going to do?" asked Rollo.
"He has got what we call an Alpine horn," said the guide; "and he is going to blow it for you, to let you hear the echoes."
So, when Mr. George and Rollo reached the place, the man blew into the end of his pole, which proved to be hollow, and it produced a very loud sound, like that of a trumpet. The sounds were echoed against the face of a mountain which was opposite to the place in a very remarkable manner. Mr. George paid the man a small sum of money, and then they went on.
Not long afterwards they came to another hut, which was situated opposite to a part of the mountain range where there was a great accumulation of ice and snow, that seemed to hang suspended, as it were, as if just ready to fall. A man stood at the door of this hut with a small iron cannon, which was mounted somewhat rudely on a block of wood, in his hand.
"What is he going to do with that cannon?" asked Rollo.
"He is going to fire it," said Henry, "to start down the avalanches from the mountain."
Henry here pointed to the face of the mountain opposite to where they were standing, and showed Rollo the immense masses of ice and snow that seemed to hang suspended there, ready to fall.